It won’t be any surprise to anyone who reads my blog that I am extremely pleased that Kellie Patterson was elected once again to the Cuyahoga Falls City Schools’ Board of Education after a two-year hiatus.  Beyond the fact that we are good friends, I firmly believe that Kellie is a hero for taking the hard, long road of suing the school board, that she sat on at the time the case was filed, for violations of the Sunshine Laws.  She suffered public ridicule, political pressure and the loss of an election while pursuing her case, most of which was conducted pro se, or by representing herself and at her own expense.

Kellie won the case regarding violations of the Sunshine Laws on at least six separate occasions.  She actually had to slog through two cases.  The first filed because of closed meetings that were conducted for reasons that are not allowed by the Sunshine Laws.  And the second filed because her request for public records necessary to prove her first case was refused by the Board.  Kellie did not file these cases to make money (and I happen to know that she didn’t make much, if any).  She filed the cases because the citizens that live within and pay taxes to the Cuyahoga Falls City School District deserve to have honesty and transparency from the Board of Education.  The only legal way for a citizen who believes that the Sunshine Laws are not being followed by an elected body is to file a legal case against that body, and that’s exactly what she did.

Tonight, I am proud because my City took a stand and voted in favor of transparency and honesty.  That’s how the law says public business shall be conducted, and I have absolute faith that, with Kellie on the Board, school board business in Cuyahoga Falls will be conducted that way in the future.  The remaining two members of the Board and the member reelected with the second highest number of votes, should look at this election as a public mandate in favor of change in the way the school district has been conducting business and proceed accordingly.  The outgoing Board President and current fifth member of the Board, wisely, did not run again.  My guess would be that her public reasons would be family and her private reasons would be, well, private.  But I would also guess that she saw the writing on the wall and made the smart move.  Even if reelected, I wouldn’t imagine the continued microscopic glare on how the Board has conducted business would be comfortable.  I would also guess that the potential exists for additional Sunshine Law suits, particularly if the current Board leadership remains in place.  That would not be a positive situation for the school district or the community.

So, congratulations to Kellie on regaining her position on the Board of Education!  And, congratulations to the voters of the Cuyahoga Falls City School District for voting for true transparency and for change.  We definitely need both!!

There is an interesting commentary in today’s Wall Street Journal by Bill and Melinda Gates, co-chairs of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  Their Foundation funds programs worldwide, but their primary focus in the USA is improving education.

The Foundation is currently in the middle of a research study with Scholastic, Inc.  In many workplaces, employees are asked how their employer can help them to do their work better.  This study does that with teachers throughout the country.  Their piece releases some of their Intermediate Findings.  It was also developed with input from the leaders of both the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association.

One component of the study was a survey that the teachers were given that asked them to rate “15 things that might help to retain the best teachers.”  Believe it or not, higher salaries did not even make the top 10.  The things that the teachers surveyed did rate highly were those that many of us who follow education news are familiar with: more parental involvement/support, more “engagement” from educational administrators and school boards and higher quality tools to utilize in their classrooms.

The survey also showed that a majority of respondents are not against evaluation based on student performance when it  is evaluated fairly and based upon individual student improvements from year-to-year.  The majority also expressed a belief that tenure is currently granted “too early” and should be “re-evaluated regularly.”

The study is called “Measures of Effective Teaching” (a.k.a MET), and it seeks to define what skills, traits and methods create an effective teacher.  They have been “surprised” to discover that there is no “one-fits-all” description of the perfect teacher.  I was glad to read, however, that Scholastic and the Gates Foundation were not willing to accept that there is no one set of best practices that will guarantee that our children will get a good education.  While I have always believed that teachers, and what makes them “effective,” is a subjective measure; I also strongly believe that there are methods, behaviors and skills that work best with a majority of children.

With 4 kids and 2 that have graduated from the Falls Schools, I have learned that, every kid is different, and every kid will have a different relationship and possibly a different learning experience with any given teacher.  That fact is evidence of the subjective nature of evaluating teachers.  Beyond that, every kid is unique and will view school and their relationships with their teachers in their own way.

My second child graduated from CFHS last year.  I asked her for a list of the teachers that had really made a difference to her over the years, but she never did give me that list.  My oldest did, but they are very different people and for many reasons, it was probably a mistake on my part to expect answers from both of them to that question.  I have my own beliefs about which teachers made a difference to my second oldest, but since this post is not about her beliefs, I will keep my thoughts on that subject to myself.

The fact is that my 2 eldest children, who grew up in the same household, had different experiences in the same school district with a fair number of the same teachers.  And my third daughter is having her own experiences with some of the same teachers that her older sisters had.  I don’t like to admit it, but last year, my son had the same 1st grade teacher that his oldest sister, who is 16-1/2 years older than he is, had and it was amazing but still different for him than her experience was.  I was comforted by the familiarity of dealing with someone I’d known for many years, but the fact was, he was not really the same type of student his sister had been which was an adjustment for all of us.  But it was still wonderful to work with someone who had known our family for so long.

I am an Accountant by trade, and there are rules and formulas that dictate how each measure of success should be derived in my field.  Rules and formulas create a nice, organized structure within which to work, but children and how to measure their progress does not fall into a black and white structure that is nice and neat.  We, as tax payers and a community, need to recognize that success with one 7 year-old may be getting them to recognize that a square peg only fits in a square hole, but that success with another 7 year-old may be getting them interested in books for older kids that are about World War I planes because that child has advanced reading ability, and is interested in planes, but won’t apply their skill unless the subject matter interests them and they are engaged with the material.

I was pleased to read that the teachers in the Gates Foundation Study were  not against being evaluated by results, as long as there was some objectivity in how those results were arrived at.  Another fact that I found to be positive was that the teachers are also being videotaped in the classroom.  The videos are being evaluated by education experts to see what works, and what doesn’t.  At the same time, the teachers are viewing the videos of their own classrooms to evaluate, and learn from, their own practices.  As one teacher put it while watching a video of her own classroom, “The class wasn’t with me at that point.  I need to find a better way to teach that concept.”

I would give that teacher an A+ for taking the initiative to learn from previous experiences and having the desire to improve going forward.

In my recent travels around the Internet, I found an interesting site: We Are the 99 Percent.  If you take the time to stop and read a few of the stories there, it really makes you stop and think.

I know first-hand about what some of the people on that site are going through.  Chip and I are both lucky to have good jobs, but earlier this year, we were both out of work for a time.

We are very fortunate.  My 71-year old father is having to sell the home that he and my step-mother have lived in for over twenty years.  He never really retired, but just found, as the economy floundered, that the demand for his management consulting/coaching services gradually dried up too.  He had previously had almost more work than he could handle.  They live in California, so he’s lucky that he isn’t underwater on the house.  But he has worked hard all of his life and should be able to spend his Golden Years in his own home.  He and my step-mom don’t live large, but his Social Security isn’t enough to keep up on the house payments.  My dad and step-mom are the 99%.

And it scares me to death because I can’t do anything about it.

It was a Tuesday, and the weather was perfect.  75 degrees, not a cloud in the sky.  I remember thinking that it was a shame that I had to go to work.  An ordinary thought that I only remember because of what was to come…

I was working as a Bookkeeper for a local company at the time, and I was scheduled to close the books for August that day.  The owner of the company was out in California at the time, and he called in and told the receptionist that we were “under attack by f***ing terrorists.”  This would have been very close to 9:00am because we immediately turned on the only TV in the building, in a conference room, 10 feet from my desk.  The TV was on when the only channel we could get with an antenna started reporting that a 2nd plane had crashed into the South Tower.  We had over 100 people in our building and at least half of them sat in that conference room watching the devastation replay over and over.  And all day long, the only sounds that came out of that room were the quiet sobs of people crying.  The faces of the people coming out  of that conference room were those of complete shock and disbelief.

My boss cruised by my desk and said, “You still need to close today.”

I was lucky enough to be able to get onto MSNBC.com and CNN.com which I alternated between for the next 7 hours while I worked to close.  I also picked up the phone and called my husband, Chip, who was on his way downtown to give a deposition in a legal matter he was involved in at the time.  He had seen the reports just before leaving the house and was upset but also focused on where he was going and what he had to do.

My family was all on the West Coast at the time, and my parents are both early risers.  I called my dad’s house first and talked to my step-mother.  Dad was in the shower, but my call was the first they had heard about it.  She rushed to turn on CNN.

I then called my mom, and like my dad and step-mother, she hadn’t heard anything about it yet.  I hated to be the bearer of bad news, but at the same time, I just had a real need to hear my parents voices and know that everyone I loved was ok.

I continued working as I talked to people and alternately manned the live feeds on both news sites.  I called my dad again because I wanted to hear his voice too.  It was comforting to talk to him, but at the same time, I could hear the disbelief, fear and anger in his voice.  My dad, who had always seemed to have all the answers, didn’t seem to know what to say.

Chip finally called again around 10:45am.  He had been in a building adjacent to the Federal Courthouse and had been evacuated because nobody knew when or where something else might happen.  He asked what was going on with the Twin Towers.  My response, “They’re gone.  Both towers collapsed.”  There was silence on the line and then my big, strong husband started to cry.  That was the one point of the day when I almost lost it.

I had to man the reception desk while the receptionist went to lunch.  From there, I could see out the windowed facade at the front of our building.  That’s when my thoughts from earlier came back to me.  It was still gorgeous outside, still no clouds in sight, but somewhere in my country, people were dead or dying, buildings that were a symbol of my country’s power were destroyed and everyday citizens just going to work or school had been attacked.

Just before 4:00pm, I finished closing the books.  Many of my fellow workers had already left for the day.  I walked into my boss’ office, handed her the closing reports and just told her I was leaving.  Didn’t ask, just left.  Because I had to hold it together just a little bit longer and find a way to explain something that I couldn’t believe or understand to my children…

At the time, my children were at Newberry Elementary and Bolich Middle School.  We had decided not to take the kids out of school when it became apparent that Our Nation was under attack.  We did not want to disrupt their day and possibly scare them more than necessary.  We also felt that they were just as safe at their schools as they would have been at home and had every confidence that their teachers would handle the news with the professionalism and understanding of the childrens’ capacities to understand what was happening and how it would affect their worlds.

We put the kids to bed and said prayers for all the lives that had been lost and the many more whose lives would never be the same.  Then Chip held me while I cried.

But what stands out the most for me about that day is how heartbreakingly beautiful it was with that cloudless sky…  10 years gone and I still don’t understand how or why such terrible things could happen on such a perfect day.

I’m not going to go into a diatribe on my feelings about the school levy or even the library levy.  All I would say is read the issues carefully, think about what your priorities are and decide whether or not you can afford to have your taxes increased.

Here’s the big one though folks, don’t whine and complain about how things turn out if you don’t make voting a priority and fail to turn out on Tuesday.  It’s true that your one, little vote probably will not make the difference in the outcome.  But what would happen if 100 people took 30 minutes (probably fewer) out of their day on Tuesday to stop by the polls and vote?  In a community of our size, it could make all the difference in the world.

Your vote will not count if you fail to make it but your vote will count if you actually show up at the polls and make it…